Joanna MacGregor

Joanna MacGregor0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety seven, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My Cosway this week is a pianist. Her parents were Seventh-day Adventists and educated her at home until she was eleven, laying the foundations of breadth of interest and originality of approach, which are the essence of her work. At both Cambridge and the Royal Academy, she refused to be pushed down too narrow a path, emerging as a champion of contemporary composers such as Bertwhistle, Messian, and Berrio. She sees fewer divisions between jazz, classical, and pop music than most, and her innovative concerts, in which she appears dressed less conventionally than most concert pianists, are designed to draw new audiences for music as a whole. You can present something difficult if it's exciting if you do it with energy, she says. She is Joanna MacGregor. And you achieve that, not least, Joanna, by talking to your audience. You're a concert pianist who speaks. Yes, unfortunately. But I first discovered this when I was playing Basak years ago and I arrived at a venue and there were no programme notes.

Presenter1:28

And um I thought, well this is terrible, I can't go out and play some very loud, obscure piece of buttock, which it was. And that's the first time I ever spoke in public and I realised that you do get then a tremendous feedback from the audience if you can just show that you're human and you've got a sense of humour and you just give the slightest inkling of about, you know, what's about to happen. I suppose traditionists would say that good music speaks for itself and you shouldn't come between it and its audience. I think good music does absolutely speak for itself and I also think new music is often rather intimidating. And I think it's sort of the role of a performer to do everything in their power to just take all that preconception away. Of course new music, modern serious music, often has titles these days as well, which of course it never did. We all know the classical pieces by numbers and so on. I'm thinking of Django Bates piano concerto which you premiered.

Joanna MacGregor2:10

Yeah.

Speaker 32:10

And

Presenter2:16

Last year, I think. It's called What It's Like to Be Alive. Yeah. You know, this is blurring the distinction, the edges, isn't it, between popular music and serious music? It certainly is. But even that piece, I remember saying to the audience beforehand that the way he composed it was by putting up a washing line in his music room, and every time he wrote a movement, he hung it on this washing line. I mean, that was the whole point of being alive, was that one day it was traffic noise, the next day it was his baby crying, the next day it was something else.

Joanna MacGregor2:20

Yeah.

Presenter2:41

So, I mean, even a title like that needs some explanation. So, perhaps they should make videos of serious music. I mean, you can see a video made of exactly the image you've just painted. Yeah, I think.

Joanna MacGregor2:48

I

Presenter2:50

New technology is a very exciting development and while I think there's always a place for a chamber music concert, say, at the Wigmore Hall with all the traditional trappings that that involves, there's also got to be some development on other fronts as well. Your performance is more visual anyway, because I mean quite often well I don't know how often but you certainly play on occasions with the whole of your forearm, don't you? Or lean up and actually play a note from inside the piano. Yes I must say I do this when the composer requires it. I don't suddenly remote succadenza, something start bashing with my forearms. But yeah, I mean that's the the key to new uh music in the 20th century is that it does require a lot more of the performer in many ways. I mean physically it requires a lot.

Joanna MacGregor3:01

Yeah.

Presenter3:28

So you have to walk on stage with an enormous amount of energy and a willingness to do these rather crazy looking things. But isn't it all an admission that new music, contemporary music, is incredibly difficult and that somehow the audience has got to be encouraged to work at it? I would have said that twenty or thirty years ago that was the case. There was the one type of new music that was generally played and it was very forbidding. And I think these days what now is called new music is vastly uh wider range. And you know, it goes right from the gamut of Michael Nyman, Philip Klaus on one end, and Bertlerth or the other, and in the middle a lot of jazz. And so I think from that point of view it's much less intimidating than it used to be. But nevertheless, a lot of new music composers can try and make

Presenter4:12

People feel quite guilty because they want at the end of a heavy week to to go along and have a familiar bit of Rachmaninoff wash over them, you know, and makes them feel better. Why not? Oh, I yeah, I mean I stick on music to make me feel better. I absolutely do. I play a blast of bark in the morning or something to to get me going. But I and I don't think composers write music in order to give people a hard time either.

Presenter4:32

Let's let some wash over us now. What's your first one for this Desert Immer? My first record is John Dahland because my mum had a lovely recording of Peter Peirce singing John Dahland and I grew up with this and I've I've picked one of these songs, but the instrumental version played by Fretwerk.

Presenter5:44

The Earl of Essex Galliard by John Dowland, played by Fretwerk. So you sit at the centre of these performances, Joanna, um, pretty unconventional, as I said, often wearing trousers or cowboy boots and so on. Certainly no velvet skirts and pint-up blouses. You are a marketing man's dream, really. How how desperately have you had to fight them off? Do they want to drape you across pianos and things? Yes, I have been asked to drape across pianos, and quite recently I was asked to drape myself across the bonnet of a

Presenter6:12

Cab and it's very easy. Just say no.

Presenter6:15

It's quite simple. But they'd never ask Ashkenazi to do that Brendel, would they? I mean, does it irritate you?

Presenter6:22

It amuses me and all you have to do is know that you're in control of the image in the end and then you can stop any absurdity.

Presenter6:30

What about attacks from the music listening public? I mean, do people ever come up to you and accuse you of playing cacophon caco cacophonous rubbish?

Presenter6:40

Only my husband, who has to live with Burtwhistle sometimes, morning after morning. But it's not an easy path, is it? I mean, this the sort of struggling down the uncharted route uh with these modern composers. And it seems to me that that you do that with more enthusiasm than most. I think a lot of performers are quite wary about the aggro you might get down there.

Presenter7:01

Well, um I don't really see it as aggro. It's not easy, but I find it immensely re rewarding and terribly exciting to be involved in a premiere and that moment, you know, when the music arrives by post or whatever it is and you open it and you look for it for the first time. What's very hard is of course there is no history to a piece when you're playing it for the first time and I think you forget that if you pick up a Beethoven sonata or a concerto

Joanna MacGregor7:12

Uh

Speaker 47:12

Uh

Joanna MacGregor7:12

Uh

Speaker 47:12

Uh

Presenter7:23

There is actually a history to the performance which you've imbibed quite unconsciously. Of course, with a very uh brand new piece, there's none of that, and you have to make the first performance, literally. Enormous responsibility, because also the composer's going to be there. Well, the composer's going to be there, and you need to do it well, because the whole point is to do it well enough that it gets done again. And it's probably the first time he's heard it.

Joanna MacGregor7:33

Enormous response.

Presenter7:42

Yes, very often it is. Well, I mean in in in all its full glory, as it were. Is it true that Harry Bertwhistle faxes you as you go from his house in France? He has been known, yes. I remember when I did his concerto he'd made a few alterations and of course, needless to say, he put more notes in, he didn't take any notes out and uh he was faxing stuff over from France, you know, which was quite

Joanna MacGregor7:43

Oh, I mean

Joanna MacGregor7:44

It does.

Joanna MacGregor7:45

Yes it works.

Joanna MacGregor7:51

Yeah.

Presenter8:02

Funny. But the question that arises from that is how do you remember it? I mean, new music, you know, as I say, can be very cacophonous, can be an enormous jumble of notes. How do we know you're playing the right one?

Joanna MacGregor8:02

Okay.

Presenter8:15

Yeah, so many Fieflers said that to me, oh you could just be playing any old thing, couldn't you?

Presenter8:19

And firstly I say, well trust me, I'm trying not to play any old thing. I'm trying to play exactly what the composer's written.

Presenter8:26

And you know, don't forget that I have to spend hours and hours and hours a day on just maybe one bar even, you know, it's very hard. And there's a rhythmic structure underlying everything. And

Presenter8:36

When you hear a piece for the first time you are a bit lost. You go, My goodness, what on earth was that all about? But me as a performer, I I know my way through it, you know, I've navigated this terrain.

Presenter8:45

Record number two. My record number two is the wonderful Clive Rowe. I did a show with my theatre director husband of The Mystery Place last summer. Huge, epic production. And the music all the way through was a cappella gospel. And I've taken with me Clive Rowe singing Lord I've Tried.

Speaker 49:04

I have lost connection.

Presenter9:07

Yeah.

Speaker 49:07

Oh, what a drive.

Presenter9:07

Yeah.

Speaker 49:12

Oh Lord, sometimes I'm up!

Speaker 49:15

Sometimes I'm down.

Speaker 49:26

That I am finding round by round All your love, you know I'm trying.

Presenter9:34

Clive Rowe singing Lord I've Tried, and that was arranged by my castaway Joanna McGregor. So you grew up with a lot of that sort of gospel singing, a cappella choirs, unaccompanied choirs.

Joanna MacGregor9:44

We have a company.

Presenter9:46

By your Seventh-day Adventist parents you were brought up. What does that mean exactly? What sort of upbringing was it? It was a very, on one hand, rather eccentric, but also very loving and colourful and fun upbringing. We went to church every Saturday, which is where I heard all this music, sort of all day. It was a black church and wonderful gospel music, and I had this sort of classic thing of playing the piano at church and playing all the hymns and everything. This was in Wilsdon in North London.

Joanna MacGregor10:13

This was in

Joanna MacGregor10:15

Yeah.

Presenter10:16

And um they believe in abstinence from tea and coffee and really um sort of uh rather mild now compared. But I mean when I was very young they had me very young and uh they were very enthusiastic and so it was no tea, no coffee, no alcohol, no smoking. Very healthy, very healthy lifestyle. Was it a very strict upbringing or was it quite liberal? It was both. I mean I think it was strict in the sense that they did have kind of religious um outlook.

Presenter10:42

And I was brought up to know my Bible inside out.

Presenter10:45

But also liberal in a sense I wasn't at school and we worked in the morning and if the weather was nice I played out in the garden afternoon. How did that work? How were you educated at home? Well, they used to buy all books, uh, school books of maths and English history, and uh say, Write, okay, this morning you're going to do two hours of maths. Now, you know, that's quite interesting. Say it's a six or seven-year-old you're doing two hours of maths. Here's the book. Now, start at this chapter, here's the answers, mark yourself. If you have a problem, come to me and ask. Is this your mother or your father? Both. Both. And uh.

Joanna MacGregor11:10

Since your mother

Presenter11:14

So it was so I learned from a very early age to to work very hard and to enjoy working on my own. And of course this is what you do as a pianist. You just work on your own a lot of the time.

Joanna MacGregor11:23

Uh

Presenter11:24

But then I went to school at eleven. But what did the kids think of you when you got there? You must have been a slightly strange fish.

Joanna MacGregor11:26

But what did the

Presenter11:31

I wonder if I was. I you'd have to ask the kids. I took to it like a duck to water. I couldn't believe that a teacher was standing up in class and telling us what to write, telling us what to put down. It seemed to me so easy that a teacher would tell you what to think.

Presenter11:43

after that. And how did you compare academically? I think yeah, I think it was okay. I think, you know, when you're on your own you make quite fast progress. And uh I probably had a few gaps in my education, but um then on the other hand I had a lot of music. So

Presenter11:57

Piano? Piano, yes. There was a piano in the house, upright, piano. My mum taught me to play when I was very little and uh records, you know. What did you play? Do you remember? When I was tiny.

Presenter12:09

Well, I played everything. I played you know, I loved Mozart when I was a little girl. I think all children love Mozart because there are pictures of him when he was a little boy and uh there's a sort of great childhood recognition.

Presenter12:19

I played a lot of bark when I was a little girl and I played a lot of pop music.

Presenter12:23

In fact, my mother told me recently I'd completely forgotten this. I played so much pop music and jazz when I was about ten. She ran round the house sort of gathering up all the music and banning it, saying, Listen, you've got to start playing classical music again. And you got your grade eight when you were twelve. Yeah, well, that's why she said she said, oh, you know, until you take grade eight, you can't play any more pop music. So obviously I've got to move on then. Record number three.

Presenter12:46

Ah, well, it's the Beatles, and um I didn't quite know which

Presenter12:50

Pop group or piece of pop music to take, because I listen to pop music all the time and I've taken a classic, which is Tomorrow Never Knows, to me it's got the same orchestral texture as, you know, a symphony.

Presenter13:31

Tomorrow Never Knows by The Beatles from their album Revolver.

Presenter13:35

I said at the beginning, Joanna, that you refused to be pushed down too narrow a path. People were very suspicious of this breadth of approach, weren't they, that you brought?

Presenter13:44

I think particularly once I went to the Academy, I was genuinely surprised that at that time when you arrived with a music degree, they thought you left it too late to be a pianist. Because you went to Cambridge first and and studied music. Yeah, I studied composition with Hugh Wood, which was fantastic. He was he was marvellous, very much after my own heart, you know, quite a maverick.

Joanna MacGregor13:54

President.

Presenter14:04

And um, you know, at the Academy I was just amazed that uh you know they had a very narrow definition of what a piano should be, which was basically you practice the piano from the age of thirteen and nothing did nothing else. Which is crazy, because you need to have a a trained brain of some kind to be able to play.

Presenter14:19

You need to be incredibly organized and look far into the future to work out your schedule, you know. I mean, it's not just a matter of.

Presenter14:27

Falling off a log and somehow being born with this great talent, there's a lot of other stuff that goes into it. So why did you go to Cambridge for some? You didn't know, presumably, then that you wanted to be a performer. Not at all, no. I mean, I always played the piano, but I I hadn't taken it particularly seriously. I certainly didn't do a lot of practice. And while I played quite a lot, you know, I was always performing. I it wasn't a a career option at all. I actually wanted to be a composer.

Presenter14:49

And then I got a bit overawed by that whole thing at Cambridge, you know.

Presenter14:53

You found it all a bit stuffy, didn't you?

Joanna MacGregor14:53

Yeah.

Speaker 414:53

Yeah.

Joanna MacGregor14:53

Conduct.

Presenter14:56

Yeah, it was stuffy and um You were into the leopard skin by then, I understand. Well listen, I was a punk at Cambridge, I have to admit this and uh

Presenter15:05

You know, again, again, the music faculty seemed quite narrow. You know, I couldn't really make it out why you wouldn't also be interested in pop music and jazz as the w uh as well as classical music. I think these things have changed, you know, in the last fifteen years. So did you think when you then went on to the Royal Academy that this was going to be liberation and then it turned out not to be? No, I didn't. I went uh I went along because I just seriously wanted to practice the piano for eight hours a day and I I needed to do lots of work on my technique and I wanted to get a bedrock of repertoire, you know. I I I drank in everything that the Academy could offer me, but n knowing at the same time that I was going to have to make my own way, which is a rather it's a sort of painful business because everybody wants to

Presenter15:44

Do the right thing. You know, you want to please people. You want to

Presenter15:49

He wants approval and recognition and all those kinds of things. But, uh, frankly, if you're into playing Char's Ives, it doesn't

Presenter15:55

But it takes great strength of character, I would have thought. You know, you alone and your your post-punk period by now, but standing alone against the establishment which says, Look, if you want to succeed and be a, you know, a concert pianist, this is what you've got to do, and you were refusing to do that. Well, I think you just have to um

Presenter16:14

Sort of know what your qualities are that you're offering, because it's very sad to try and fit in when you don't have those right attributes, you know. And I don't know, somehow I knew what my qualities were, and they were not, you know, going to be someone who walked on in a long dress and did a nice uneventful performance of Raktu, you know. What were they then?

Presenter16:37

Wow. Um

Presenter16:40

terrific interest in new music, an ability to put together interesting programmes and have a sort of a much more I suppose a m more dynamic approach, you know, and uh an interest in trying to put together repertoire from different periods, you know, the things I'm still trying to do now, trying to work out how to do it.

Presenter16:59

Record number four.

Presenter17:01

Well, so the man I would have most liked to have taken to dinner, Glen Gould.

Presenter17:07

He was uh not around any more. But uh, you know, Glenn Gould this baffling and frustrating and wonderful pianist. And it's his seminal recording of the Goldberg variations, which I think he made when he was twenty two and really sort of changed

Presenter17:21

Bach playing forever.

Presenter18:21

Glenn Gould, playing Bach's Goldberg variation number twenty five in G minor, and one of your great heroes, Joanna, notoriously particular about the pianos he played on and the halls are you pinnikety in that way?

Joanna MacGregor18:30

The horse bit.

Presenter18:33

Well, yes, and no. I mean, I think Vengold found the whole business of performing rough, you know, and pianists obviously have this problem that you never know what kind of beast you're going to be playing on till you get there.

Presenter18:43

But I think even above and beyond that that you know the whole business of performing is very volatile and it's very unexpected and you never quite know what's going to happen to you before you step on stage and who's in the audience and you know I mean all kinds of strange I mean I remember remember once I was on stage and a lamp caught fire while I was playing. I was in the middle I remember I was in the middle of a Brahms in to Mezzo and the audience were all shouting stop stop you know.

Presenter19:04

And uh last year I was uh

Presenter19:07

About to go on stage and play Beethoven too, and my hand was bitten by a dog, and I was taken to hospital given tetanus injection, you know. I mean what was a dog doing backstage? It belonged to the artistic director of this festival. So, obviously, a dog with very high standards. Maybe he didn't like the way I was playing. Do you worry about your hands terribly? No, uh not terribly. I don't um

Presenter19:26

take any special precautions. I mean, I actually ride a horse. Um, you know, people k say, What on earth are you doing doing that? But I I have a slightly fatalistic attitude. I don't do anything stupid, but I don't wrap myself in cotton wool. Oh, you chop vegetables with sharp knives and

Speaker 419:36

I did.

Speaker 419:38

Leach up

Speaker 419:39

Oh

Presenter19:42

Let's come to the what I feel anyway was a one of the big turning points in your career. You were you were lent a particularly wonderful piano, I think, when you were about twenty three. Tell me about that.

Joanna MacGregor19:52

Maybe about that.

Presenter19:53

Well, I'd I'd met um an American painter called Stephen Bishop Kovacevich, and he'd given me a couple of lessons, and he he said to me, What are you practicing on? and at that point, you know, I had just a hired upright piano, which was pretty gruesome.

Presenter20:06

And I remember at the Academy there was a terrible lack of good instruments to get on.

Presenter20:11

And uh the only time you could possibly get onto a halfway decent piano was on Sundays. You'd go in on Sunday and bribe the porter with a packet of fags and he'd unlock one of the decent sineways. You know, and so for three hours you got your hands on a good piano.

Presenter20:24

And Stephen si took one look at this piano I was practicing on and said, Well, it's ridiculous, you know, you're a very talented pianist, but you'll never learn to play really well unless you've got a good instrument and he said, I've got a spare Steinway model A which was left to me by Andrei Tchaikovsky.

Presenter20:38

Um it's now in Kyung Ma Chung's house, and I think you should have it. You know, I'm going to lend it to you.

Presenter20:44

And I was just, you know, I almost fainted with this offer. And he said, well, the only thing is, you've got to ring her up and tell her this.

Presenter20:50

She's a little bit ferocious. You say that you're a good pianist and you want it, so of course that's what I did, and it was terrifying. But then this wonderful piano came into the place where I was living.

Presenter21:00

And it was it was fantastic. It was incredible. Made a big difference. Yeah, huge.

Joanna MacGregor21:04

Yeah.

Presenter21:06

And then you were taken up by Wycat, the Young Concert Artists Trust, who who only take up, I think, very f few and very gifted musicians, and and really that was it. You were on your way from that moment. It was a great endorsement, you know, of what I was doing because they they audition people every year and they take on a very small number of people to then represent really as a commercial

Joanna MacGregor21:14

Very grand.

Joanna MacGregor21:17

Uh

Speaker 421:17

Yeah.

Joanna MacGregor21:17

Um

Presenter21:26

Adult performer, you know.

Presenter21:29

And of course I hadn't done the competition route and it was just tremendous to be sort of given this great chance. And then they they had us out on the road and there I was playing, you know, every week. More music.

Presenter21:41

Oh well, we're up to Mozart's Don Giovanni. Um I love all Mozart operas, and I think Don Giovanni is my favourite. I I remember going to see the Joseph Losi film over and over and over again just as a way to get to learn this opera.

Speaker 422:09

I leave it all in safe.

Speaker 322:34

See don't

Speaker 322:37

See your home love or just name

Speaker 322:41

Oh yeah, your information for

Speaker 322:45

Yeah.

Presenter22:55

Part of the trio from Act Two, Scene Two of Mozart's Don Giovanni, performed by Kiritikanoa, Ingva Vixel, and Vladimir O'Ganzarolli, with the orchestra of the Royal Opera House, conducted by Sir Colin Davis.

Presenter23:06

You only have stopped playing once, Joanna, in the fifteen years of your professional career since the point we just arrived at, and and that was.

Presenter23:16

For a few months, two years ago, when your newborn baby daughter Miranda died, were you worried that you'd never play again when that happened?

Presenter23:26

No, I wasn't worried. I was surprised that I stopped playing in a way, because I always see playing as you know, it's the way I express myself, and it was interesting that I just stopped. I had no desire to play at all, and obviously I was devastated, I'd been ill for a very long time as well.

Presenter23:41

And I listen to music all the time. I always remember Hewood saying to me when I was at Cambridge that at one point he was talking about a piece of mestian and he played a very beautiful tune and he probably won't remember this, but he said that music could be a great healer. You know, when terrible things happen to you, that often music can help heal you.

Joanna MacGregor23:54

Uh

Presenter23:59

And that really struck me. And he said that when that to me when I was about eighteen or nineteen and it really struck a chord.

Presenter24:04

But it's interesting then in that moment that it couldn't and didn't for a good few months.

Joanna MacGregor24:09

Yeah.

Presenter24:10

Yeah, I was I w I needed to do other things, you know, I needed to travel a bit and and uh think and

Presenter24:16

Be on my own and uh listen to music rather than actually play it. And when I

Presenter24:21

When I went back to playing I made two very big recordings and I chose the repertoire very carefully. I made a big recording of Messian's Vernegarde to L'Enfant Yesu, which is a big two and a half hour cycle about the baby Jesus. Twenty little peeps, I think it's been twenty little. Twenty little peeps, and it's very

Joanna MacGregor24:33

So I think it's been trying to do it.

Presenter24:37

It's a lot of things, this music. It's it's violent, it's angry, it's poignant, it's beautiful, it's very moving, it's very spiritual music. And of course it was no accident, that's the piece of music I turned to.

Presenter24:48

And it has a very special significance for me.

Presenter24:51

Now, that piece of music and the recording and then after that I played a beautiful

Presenter24:55

Bach piece, the out of fugue, which again is about taming the chaos in a way. It's about trying to make sense of things. And do you think the whole experience changed the way that you play?

Presenter25:05

Uh possibly. I mean I can't see how it how it

Presenter25:08

didn't because I think I you know, I think every performer walks on stage with their history and uh inevitably uh you know um

Presenter25:15

How you are is how you play. You know, there's no doubt that you can't separate the two things. And do people who know you well say that you're different, uh, that you that you play differently?

Presenter25:25

Funnily enough, I think some people have said to me, they didn't know what had happened and they said, Your playing has changed, you're playing has really you know, this what's happened? you know, and I've told them and they're very shocked and very upset, but uh, you know, people have noticed

Presenter25:38

something a it's of probably a a new depth, I hope, but I think also a strength, as a new strength, because an experience like that is

Presenter25:47

It's so terrible that, um, in order to

Presenter25:51

somehow survive it and and take it with you, you know, not cover it up, just take it with you, uh you you you learn to be strong, you know.

Presenter26:00

Record number six. It's um I think the the greatest opera written in this century, in my mind, Albenberg's Voltseck, which is a painful piece of work. It's about um, you know, the terrible life of a

Presenter26:13

The Soldier Vottek, and I've chosen the bit um the orchestral interlude after Votsek's death, which it really sums up the whole emotional impact of the opera.

Speaker 426:55

Yeah.

Presenter27:22

Part of Act Two, Scene Four of Alban Berg's Voc with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Christoph von Dochnani. You also perform, Joanna, accompanied by your own pre-recorded tracks, as it were, multi-tracking. How on earth do you do that in the concert hall? Yeah, well, with some difficulty. I mean, this kind of thing goes on all the time in the pop world, and of course, classical music gets a bit more unusual. And I did. There's a Mexican composer called Colin Nancari who wrote for player pianos extraordinarily dense jazzy music. And the only way you could possibly reproduce it on stage is by multi-tracking, which is lots of pre-recorded tracks played by me and then with me playing live against it. Does that mean you have earphones on as you sit at the well? It would look terribly groovy if I did that, but I don't bother with that, no. I mean. Well, then how do you synchronise? Oh, well, you can hear it all coming out of speakers and everything. But.

Joanna MacGregor27:59

Does that mean

Joanna MacGregor28:03

If I did that

Joanna MacGregor28:05

Baby

Presenter28:09

Didn't it go wrong on one occasion? The sound went wrong. Yes, and I spent most of my time playing these fukes and shouting at the Soundman at the same time. But the audience enjoyed it. Oh, they loved it.

Speaker 428:20

Oh the

Presenter28:21

I mean, am I right in thinking that there is part of you?

Presenter28:25

That quite likes imperfection, not of that kind, of course, no, you don't want mistakes and you don't want things to go wrong, but in the sense of recording music, you know, what what you're after is a kind of performance quality, a happening which will have imperfections, is that right? Well, I'm I'm much influenced by the producer I work with called James Mallon, who, like me, likes to work in very long takes. And once you've made that basic decision, then you have to live sometimes with the odd flaw. You go for the basic overall arch of a tape.

Presenter28:53

Because performing, after all, is about the moment. You know, th you know, I'm interested in spontaneity, basically. I mean, this is why I am very interested in working with jazz musicians. And spontaneity is not about stopping and starting and recording a bar at a time. It's also interesting, of course, that as far as jazz is concerned, the ambition of the artist is to do it differently every time. That's right. And yet, classically, you're supposed to do it. Do it the same. It's very interesting, this huge divide. I mean, a jazz musician will walk on stage and the good performance will be because he did it differently, because he had something new to say at that moment.

Joanna MacGregor29:12

Yeah.

Joanna MacGregor29:16

It's

Presenter29:26

I think this is very really strange, this divide, you know, and I think it's because we are as classical musicians we have the notes in front of us and we have to obviously stick very, very closely. But you're not suggesting that you should begin to improvise upon the piece. No, not at all. I mean I think you know there are moments obviously in terms of ornamentation in Bach French suites for example which is an invitation to slightly improvise and also cadenzas in Mozart concertos you could improvise slightly. You know we've only lost the art of improvisation in the last hundred years in the classical world.

Presenter29:57

Record number seven.

Presenter29:59

The great John Lee Hooker, the the small man with the huge voice. Here's some improvisation. Yeah, this is a holler. Send me the pillow that you dream on.

Speaker 430:08

Send me your poor bed.

Speaker 430:12

That you better try it all.

Speaker 430:17

Send me your permit That you better try now

Speaker 430:24

I have nothing left to do, baby.

Speaker 430:27

Just your memory

Speaker 430:31

I will let you know.

Speaker 430:35

Moment is nice.

Presenter30:36

Uh

Presenter30:37

John Lee Hooker singing Send Me the Pillow That You Dream On. You did about sixty concerts last year, Joanna, around the world. Several composers write specifically for you. You do world premieres for them. You've just been appointed Gresham Professor of Music, Gresham College in the City of London. What does that entail?

Joanna MacGregor30:51

Great.

Presenter30:54

I've been appointed a joint music professor with my Liverpudlian composer friend Stephen Pratt and we give nine public lectures a year on the um

Presenter31:02

The meaning of new music, basically. What is new music? Why is it there? You know, what does it mean? And uh it's a fantastic thing to be asked to do. And the the most exciting thing was we I was taken into the hall. Before I kn knew that we'd got the job, they took us into the hall, which is the original old

Presenter31:16

Hall, and the first ever professor was John Bull, the Elizabethan composer, and they've still got the first page of his lecture. And the prophet said to me, Oh, yeah, John Bull gave the first lecture here, and William Bird was sitting in the front row. And I just thought, Wow, how incredible. So it's an incredibly busy, eventful life you lead. How are you going to cope on this desert island where there's none of it? I mean, it's just people-less. It's going to be great. It's going to be quiet, and there's no fax on phones. This is the best thing about it. So there'll be no composers faxing through their latest amendments. But where would you direct all this energy, all this dynamism, all this enthusiasm?

Presenter31:52

I wonder what I do. I really love um the outdoors and the sea and the night sky and all that kind of thing. And I think I'd do a bit of thinking. I think the trouble with being energetic is that it is all action, you know, and I I you need a bit of reflection as well.

Presenter32:07

Last record

Presenter32:09

Well, my last record is by

Presenter32:11

I suppose the the first composer that um really intro introduced me to very modern music, and that's the American composer Charles Ives.

Presenter32:18

My mum said to me when I was a very little girl, she described that Charles Ives was a composer, because of course he was an insurance man by day and a composer by night, and she said that people used to stop him in the street and beg him to stop writing this cacophonous music, and this really tickled me. I thought this was very funny.

Presenter32:34

But I've chosen the unanswered question.

Presenter32:37

Which I think is a real piece of music to just lie back and look at the night sky to.

Presenter33:40

Part of the Unanswered Question by Charles Ives, performed by the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Leonard Bernstein. Now if you could only take one of those records, Joanna. Which one? I think it says everything, really. It's it's simple.

Presenter33:55

but very all-embracing.

Presenter33:57

And your book as well as the Bible and Shakespeare? It's a book that I read years ago and I want to re-read called The Sleepwalkers by Arthur Kurzler. It's a really wonderful history of astronomy.

Presenter34:08

And your luxury.

Presenter34:10

Very hard. I have this vision of an island that would be full of rustles and squeaks and marvellous, you know, weird bird sounds, and I'd if I could record those, say, on a sampler and bring them back, I could get a composer to write a piece that would include all those island sounds.

Presenter34:24

Joanna McGregor, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you.

Joanna MacGregor34:35

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts please visit bbc.co. uk slash radio four.